is fair-weather
London friends, towards the unreasoning outbursts of malignity which
drove him out of his England--with all her faults, he loves her still.
He vaguely hopes and hankers after a return to those long-lost shores:
and endeavours to believe that the future will in some way make atonement
for all the calamities of the past.

But now Shelley, Williams, Medwin, and Taafe are dismounting in the pine
forest, and the men-servants setting up the target. Pistol-practice
is Byron's forte; when he hits a half-crown at twelve yards he is as
delighted as a boy, and quite glum and disconcerted if he should happen
to miss. This very rarely happens, as he is a crack shot, easily
distancing the other competitors. His hand trembles violently, but he
calculates on this vibration, and, depending entirely on his eye, hardly
ever fails. After about an hour's shooting, the light begins to wane
towards sunset: and the friends ride back to the city, Byron in exuberant
good humour with himself and everybody else. Arrived at the Palazzo
Lanfranchi, he finds two guests awaiting him,--Count Pietro Gamba,
brother of the lovely Contessa Guiccioli, and Trelawny, that handsome,
picturesque, piratical-looking "Younger Son," who has not yet published
to an astonished world his remarkable and almost incredible "Adventures."
Trelawny is at present in command of Byron's yacht the _Bolivar_, lying
in the harbour of Genoa.

The poet welcomes these new additions to his company: for, since his
arrival in Pisa, he has begun to entertain men at dinner-parties, for
the first time since leaving England. A very cheerful company sits down
with him to dinner: their host displays himself to great advantage,
"being at once," to quote Shelley, "polite and cordial, full of social
hilarity and the most perfect good humour, never diverging into
ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness
throughout the evening." Byron, according to his own declaration, has
never passed two hours in mixed society without wishing himself out of
it again. Nobody, however, could guess at this fact from his bright,
frank, and spontaneous gaiety. Always an abstemious eater--"I have fed
at times for over two months together," he assures his friends, "on
sheer biscuit and water,"--very little food suffices him: and besides,
_bien entendu_, he is anxious to retain that "happy slenderness" on
which he prides himself,--the slenderness which is a characteristic
of h